“The geography and history of Central Eurasia are inseparable.”¹

In the last chapter, I argued that expressions of monotheism in religions such as Zoroastrianism and Judaism must have originated as a refinement of monotheistic worldviews situated in previously proto-monotheistic religious framework. This framework might have included the worship of a number of deities, but could be differentiated from neighboring polytheistic systems in specific ways that could directly facilitate the development of a more recognizable monotheism. The question of this chapter concerns the development of these proto-monotheistic religions. I suggest that there is a substantial correlation between the natural environment and the development of most ancient religions. It is in the natural landscapes, which were home to the ancient Iranians and Israelites, that we can trace 'whence came' their proto-monotheism, and consequent monotheism. In this final chapter, I will argue that the religion, like the mobile pastoralist roots of these two ancient religious communities developed as pragmatic responses to specific geographic and ecological circumstances.

From Feuerbach to Frazer, there have been a number of scholars who cite natural phenomena as the inspiration for religious symbols, rituals, and mythologies.² What appears to be lacking in scholarship, however, is work concerning the influences of the natural environment on the psychology of a people such that they develop religious beliefs or praxis. In his article “An Ecological Approach to Religion” Swedish anthropologist Åke Hultkrantz explains that he “…as a result of his own field research…became convinced of the fundamental importance of natural (environmental) conditions to religious development.”³ By engaging with Hultkrantz and Mircea Eliade, I will propose a theoretical framework for the study of religions which underlies this research and has implications beyond the discussion of the origins and development of different expressions of monotheism. Although my work considers the human animal, in an environmental context, to be functioning at-effect in relation to Nature, this framework is suggested, in the words of anthropologist Michael D. Frachetti’s, not as “environmental determinism but rather [as] environmental pragmatism.”⁴

In order to understand this connection between landscapes and religion, we must examine the situation of the societies of the ancient Iranians and Israelites in their respective ecological contexts. It is important to consider the mobile pastoralism that likely characterized these societies before they moved into, and established, settled communities. For it is the same landscape that allowed for the socio-economic construction of mobile pastoralism which would influence the development of religious culture. This is concisely summarized in Frachetti’s observation that the “geography and history of Central Eurasia are inseparable.”⁵ Before we can examine the possible mobile pastoralist roots of ancient Iranian and Israelite societies, it is important to explore the defining traits that characterize mobile pastoralist systems.

Whether called 'semi-nomadic', 'nomadic', or 'mobile pastoralists', many different terms have been used to describe what Frachetti explains is “most commonly understood as a social and economic strategy predominantly based in routine (such as seasonal) migratory management of domesticated herd animals.”⁶ I use the term 'mobile pastoralism', after Frachetti, in an attempt to include, in this study, the various societies which have been constructed around the “management of domesticated herd animals” in response to agriculturally marginal landscapes and acknowledge the range of modes of mobility which might have characterized each of these at different periods of time.⁷ Anthropologist Roger Cribb notes the way in which terms such as 'semi-nomadic pastoralism' are often used without addressing the two different concepts which have been merged into one:

Nomadic pastoralism is a dual concept comprising two logically independent dimensions – nomadism and pastoralism. Within each of these dimensions dualisms such as nomadic/sedentary, agricultural/pastoral, the desert and the sown, perpetrate gross distortions of our ability to understand the relationship between the two. Each dimension may be viewed as a continuum, and the relationship between them is best represented in terms of a probability space in which groups or individuals are uniquely located with respect to each axis.⁸

Cribb's suggestion that these two 'dimensions', which constitute the concept of mobile pastoralism, might be viewed as continua is valuable to our understanding of these societies. With the nuances of these dimensions acknowledged, we can examine ways in which the earliest societies of the ancient Iranians and Israelites have been characterized as mobile and pastoralist.